Because of this, hip flexors are always engaged, become overused, and put extreme pressure on the spine

Update

Last night we saw an 8 year old with a tight, painful hip flexor because she showed her friends her gymnastics at a party without warming up! Remember, muscles can be easily injured when not warmed up, even in 8 year-olds! For treatment, we did exactly what we listed here. She’ll be better in 3 days!

Let’s discuss what to do immediately, then get in to a more permanent fix.

At Home Care for Injured Hip Flexors in Gymnasts

KT Tape Pro is a great solution to begin the healing process. KT Tape increases the proprioception of muscles and joints, allowing the body to know where it is in space better. This allows our young athletes to move their bodies with more information, keeping them in injury free ranges of motion.

Imagine giving your athlete information so they are able to move their bodies with more control INSTANTLY. This is KT Tape Pro!

30 Day Hip Flexor Stretch Challenge

With all of my gymnasts, I challenge them to stretch their hip flexors for 30 days. The first 3-7 days will include soreness, but continue stretching. At day 10, you’ll notice a huge difference. Here is the stretch with instructions:

Body in lunge position

Shoulders up and back

Core tight, glutes squeezed

To isolate, tuck hips under (posterior pelvic tilt)

At this point, tight hip flexors will begin to be stretched

If you need more of a stretch, gently bring hips forward as if someone was pushing on your lower back.

It should look just like the picture to the right!

Preventing Hip Flexor Pain In Gymnasts

Most hip flexors become tight because gymnasts never give them a chance to rest.

Resting hip flexors does take work. Why? Because hip flexors is an antagonist muscle to the gluteus maximus muscle.

This means when the hip flexors are contracting, the gluteus maximus muscle is relaxing, and when the gluteus maximus muscle is contracting, the hip flexors are relaxing.

So our goal is to get full contraction of our glute muscles allowing hip flexors to relax. We do this by squeezing the glutes as hard as possible during jumps and we recognize this in our athletes when they have absolutely no pike to their jumps. Here are two examples:

What Happens If My Gymnast Doesn’t Use Glutes to Jump and Land?

Great question!

Here are several guarantees:

Before puberty, they’ll experience back pain

After puberty, the’ll experience stress reactions in their spine, and there is a great possibility they will experience stress fractures in the spine (pars fractures or spondylolysis)

Jumping/leaping is limited due to inability to recruit gluteus maximus muscles (in other words, very small gymnastics)

Where Else Are Hip Flexors Overused?

Another great question!

Bars. Bars is a combination of rotational physics and extreme core strength. Of course, we don’t always see this happening in the gym. What we see is the overuse of hip flexors in order to achieve position.

The other aspect of bars that is seldom discussed, is using your glute muscles to bring the body into a straight line. By using your glutes to achieve this position, you’ve given your hip flexors another opportunity to relax.

The Gymnast Care Solution to Overcoming Hip Flexor Dominance

Developing Incredible Jumps and Protective Landings

Learn to squat. All other athletic movements come from this.

Learn the position of take off, and landing.

Stress these positions.

Develop A Responsive, Protective Core

Learn to initiate core without the shortening of your abs.

Stop tucking your hips under when accessing core…it’s dangerous and it decreases your ability to perform.

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About Dr. Joshua Eldridge

Dr. Joshua Eldridge has specialized in protecting gymnasts from injury. He is the inventor of The X Brace, and has developed a treatment protocol for Sever's disease and heel pain that has helped thousands of gymnasts throughout the world. Dr. Eldridge brings practical, easy injury care and prevention that can be done at home.

My daughter is allergic to adhesive. She can not even wear a band-aide for a couple minutes with out a rash beginning to appear. When we wrap her it is with Co-ban. Do you happen to know if the adhesive on the KT tape would cause a reaction? The last thing she needs is to develop sores where the adhesive on the KT tape touches her skin.

Sorry this took a few days to get back to you. The new KT Tape Pro has worked well for our athletes not causing reactions. We’ve had athletes allergic to everything, try it and have great luck.

With that being said, there are athletes that do have reactions to KT Tape Pro. All of the reactions I’ve seen have been very mild, but it does happen. I’ve used the tape on 1,000’s of female gymnasts and I’ve had reactions in 3 that I know of.

Hope this helps. Feel free to call or email me at any time if you have important questions needing answered right away. doc@gymnastcare.com or 425-260-0991

[…] Click here to see our best hip flexor stretch. It will decrease back pain and increase motion at your hips. You have to do it for 30 days, and during the first 3-7 days, you’ll get sore, but at day 10, you’ll see a huge difference in your ability to move! […]

Colleen, I’ve updated the post. The video here will get you started with the squats and then the Book on Injuries (http://gymnastcare.com/book-on-injuries) has the rest of the protocols in an easy to use format.

I’ve recently discovered your websites and posts, and am reading through them. Sometimes, I discover small oversights like this one, in which a link isn’t connected, etc. If you’d like to know when I find an error, I can continue to contact you when I notice them. If, however, it’s annoying and you’d rather I not bother you with this information, please let me know, and I’ll just read on.

Our family really appreciates information about nutrition as well as landing protocol – thanks for sharing!

Colleen,
I am really excited that you’ve gotten into our site and you’re learning from the content. Definitely let me know if you find something that we’ve overlooked and I can make sure it gets fixed! We’ve worked hard to get the info out and we want our community to get the most out of it.
Feel free to leave a comment, send us a message on Facebook, or send me an email at doc@gymnastcare.com.
I am glad you’re learning and please let me know any questions. I’d love to be a resource for you and your family.

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Dr. Joshua Eldridge

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